against the currents that whirl beneath them. Though the number, size and colour of these shapes varies from one canvas to the next, they evoke the same sensations of stability, an effect due not only to their upright or horizontal bearing but also to their careful positioning, either partly or wholly atop the calm centre of each canvas. This was a refinement with respect to Stella, whose red geometry had not been stationed in this manner. Sometimes the geometries of the Nocturnes shine forth in pink or gold, creating moments of bright harmony amid the darkness. At other times their tones are more subdued. In all cases, however, the same effect of stillness is preserved. Throughout the series Albrecht’s interest in cosmic harmony persisted, but she enriched the connotations of her canvases with the help of poetic subtitles. Two of these, Scintilla and Nomadic Geometries [p.174], are especially suggestive. ‘Scintilla’, a word meaning trace or spark, fosters an understanding of her gold trails not simply as cosmological phenomena but also as interior events. Perhaps they are sparks of insight akin to those evoked by the Illuminations, or else they could be currents of emotion that flare up and then fade from awareness. On this reading the Nocturnes are inner spaces, as well as evocations of the cosmos. The phrase ‘nomadic geometries’ was taken from a poem by Octavio Paz called ‘Nocturno de San Ildefonso’ [San Ildefonso Nocturne] and published in 1974. Paz’s opening evocation of a play of neon signs in the darkness had lately captured Albrecht’s imagination: In my window night invents another night, another space: carnival convulsed in a square yard of blackness. Momentary confederations of fire, nomadic geometries, errant numbers. From yellow to green to red, the spiral unwinds.
The Andromeda Galaxy
Much like Whistler’s fireworks display, Albrecht’s painting exploits the abstract capabilities of Paz’s text, which is sufficiently loose in its descriptions that it can float free of its literal points of reference and become a more general evocation of a play of coloured shapes in a sea of blackness. The forms Paz describes may well be signs, but they are signs whose significance he unfixes. They are therefore nomadic in two senses — both physically and semantically. This pervasive mutability makes them a fitting point of reference for Albrecht’s shapes, whose positions and meanings change between canvases, deepening the longer we observe them and expanding from one group of ovals to the next. In this way they can
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